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Thursday, 18 December 2014

I’m getting rather tired of rearranging furniture. It
started with emptying the kitchen in preparation for the new one. I
disassembled the kitchen table so it would fit through the door and reassembled
it temporarily in the lounge, the fridge was moved into the dining room and I
emptied all the cupboards into boxes and stashed them wherever I could find
room. Except none of it turned out as temporary as it was supposed
too. The kitchen refit dragged on for weeks as I encountered problem
after problem and delay after delay, but I persevered, what else could I
do?

While I waited for the decorator to fit me into his busy
schedule I decided this would be a good time to move all the pots and pans out
of their boxes and find a home in the lovely new cupboards and have a clear out
of the utility room as well. A major spring clean ensued. I lost
count of the trips I made to the charity shop to donate items I had accumulated
over the years, and countless plastic bottles and tubs emerged from their
hiding places and made their way to the recycling bin.

Then I hit another snag… the radiators weren’t working
properly. On inspection the gas supplier came to the conclusion that they
needed flushing out. It was only a two day job, but they needed access to
every radiator to change the valves as well. I went through the house
moving furniture and ornaments out of the way of the radiators. The
lounge and dining room, still cluttered with stray items from the kitchen,
proved tricky but I managed it. Of course once the heating was fixed, I
had to then put it all back again…

Exasperating I wasn’t done yet though… I discovered a
crack in the new granite worktop. Seriously a crack! This stuff is
supposed to be tough and hard wearing and it’s cracked already. Needless
to say I’m not impressed. The company came and inspected and agreed to
replace it, so guess what…? All those nicely packed cupboards of pots and
pans needed to be emptied again.

After a few weeks delay, as the initial replacement
apparently cracked during cutting and so the company had to source another
piece to work with, it finally arrived. To my surprise, and immense
relief the old worktop slid out relatively easily without disrupting the up
stand, splash back or tiles, phew! The new piece was slid in and our
smiles faded… it was cracked in exactly the same place.

The fitters and I stared at it in disbelief, all that work
and it was still wrong. A phone call to the company resulted in a promise
that they would put it right, which is great but still means I’ll have to go
through all of this yet again. The guys left, somewhat deflated, I
cleaned the cupboards and refilled them once more, frustrated to discover that
I couldn’t quite remember how it had all come out and even more frustrated by
the knowledge that I will be doing this yet again when a replacement is ready.

Everything’s on hold now while I wait to hear back from the
company, not that I want the new worktop just now anyway, I’d actually quite
like to put my Christmas tree and decorations up and am therefore taking a
well-earned break from emptying cupboards and moving furniture.

About Me

Aspiring writer, RNA NWS member, Mslexia blogger, amateur figure skater and complete neat freak.
Elaina James is an accountant with a preference for words.
She’s a reluctant gardener, in fact she’s really not much of an outdoors kind of girl at all, unless there’s a beach involved and then just try and stop her.
You can always tell how many writing projects she has underway, by the size of her handbag. Each project is kept in its own note pad and carried with her in the ever increasing collection in her bag. Of course this could just be a clever ploy to buy more handbags…